Sailor: Lucky To Be Alive After Fiery Collision

March 16, 1992|By MATHEW PAUST Daily Press

GLOUCESTER — It was about midnight on Dec. 6 when Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan B. Mayhew drove his '79 Ford Mustang onto the George P. Coleman Memorial Bridge on his way to Virginia Beach and home.

The trip ended up taking nearly a month, and included a detour through three hospitals.

Mayhew, 23, a Tennessee-born electronics technician assigned to the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was almost killed that December night in one of the worst car accidents ever on the York River span.

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Tuesday, March 17, 1992. An article on Monday's front page incorrectly stated that Cheryl Harris was separated from Joseph Michael Harris at the time of his fatal car crash. They were not legally separated, Mrs. Harris said.

A drunken driver heading home to Gloucester, who according to a witness had been weaving through traffic for at least a mile, careened into Mayhew's car on the two-lane bridge about 65 mph. The impact was so great that the drunken driver, Joseph Michael Harris, 33, died almost instantly. The Plymouth Horizon compact car he was driving caught fire and burned as horrified onlookers watched helplessly.

The bones in Mayhew's face were smashed to pieces that ground together agonizingly when he tried to breathe. One of his teeth was later found embedded in the steering wheel of his demolished auto.

For the young sailor, the crash was a nightmare turned stark reality, while for Harris it concluded a night spent roaming bars before his fatal, frenzied dash in a borrowed car.

Mayhew was returning from his girlfriend's home in the Pinero community of Gloucester County that Friday night, after spending the afternoon and evening with her. He had to be on duty at 6 a.m.

He always had been especially alert when crossing the bridge, he said. He joined the Abingdon Volunteer Rescue Squad in Gloucester two years earlier when he lived in the county with some shipmates and had worked some pretty bad wrecks on the Coleman.

"I've run the same wreck as mine on the bridge," he said. "I've thought before, `I wonder if it will ever happen to me?' "

On the night of Dec. 6, he recalled, traffic was light as he started up the bridge's incline. Nearing the crest, he saw a pair of headlights in the opposite lane.

"Then I saw a second set of headlights come up behind the first car. I knew the second car couldn't stop. The headlights swung out into my lane and came right at me.

"I remember thinking, 'He's going to hit me!' "

Mayhew said he doesn't remember the impact. His next recollection is of sitting in his crushed Mustang, his face wedged into the steering wheel.

"The first thing I thought was, `Where are my shoes?' " he said, adding that he found them weeks later at the junkyard where his car had been towed, wedged under the dashboard.

He said he felt no pain, but that at first he couldn't move and wondered if he might be paralyzed.

"I heard a noise. I didn't know if it was a voice or if it was just my ears ringing. Then I heard the word `fire' and somebody saying that they couldn't get to him.

"Then I thought I heard the guy screaming, and that's when I got motivated to get out of the car," Mayhew said.

Despite what Mayhew thought he heard, a medical examiner and a man who tried to rescue Harris believe the Gloucester man probably never regained consciousness after the crash.

The would-be rescuer, who asked not to be named, said he was several cars back in the Gloucester-bound lane when he saw the accident, jumped out of his car and ran to the wreckage.

"I could see it was too late to help him. Flames were coming from the engine at first and then spreading into the passenger compartment," he said. "I was afraid the gas tank would explode, but I might have tried to get him out if I thought he was still alive."

Harris' autopsy described multiple skull fractures and massive internal injuries. His blood contained a trace of antihistamine and had an alcohol content of 0.26 percent. A driver with 0.10 percent is presumed legally drunk.

"My bet is he was unconscious when he died," said Dr. Henry C. Rowe, the county medical examiner who first examined the body.

As flames continued to spread through Harris' car, Mayhew managed to get free himself.

"My hand was wedged between the seat and the console. I got my hand out, then I got the seat belt loose and then I popped open the door.

"I fell out of the door on my back and I couldn't move. I couldn't sit up. I felt like basically I had run about 100 miles," he said.

Mayhew said he rolled away from his car, fearing that it would catch fire.

"It was kind of like a dream," he said. "I made a couple of rolls. I could see my pants were soaked with blood. Then, when I breathed out, blood went everywhere. That's when I thought, `I'm really messed up.' "

He vaguely remembers someone coming up to him then and telling him that help was being called. He thinks it was Natalie Harris, who he later learned was driving the first car he saw at the bridge crest.

Natalie Harris, a Gloucester resident and nursing student who is not related to Joseph Harris, found Mayhew's car in her path when it spun around after the first collision, State Police say. Her car hit Mayhew's, but she was not hurt.